News

GIFT City: Use of Geo-Informatics in making of Smart City

“Land-use planning & optimisation of infrastructure services are utmost priority for us to make GIFT as a sustainable smart city.”

- RK Jha, MD and Group CEO, GIFT City

In GIFT City, the planners have used GIS in benchmarking of master plan, 3D visualisation for urban skyline, geometric network of power utility and landscape management.

India’s first International Finance Service Centre, Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT City), a first-of-its-kind technology based urban development is spread over an area of 886 acres and aims to provide 62 million square feet built-up area supported by state-of-the-art infrastructure services including district cooling and mass rapid transportation system.

Being a first urban development experiment on a greenfield of this scale, key decisions related to placement of various infrastructure services play a very important role in making of a world class smart city. In fact, management of spatial information along with the various design and engineering solutions of multiple disciplines is really a test for city planners.

With the advancement of geo-information technology being used in surveying, urban planning, engineering and processing of various information on spatial platform has provided a comprehensive decision-making approach to the city planners. It has the potential to increase efficiency in developing and delivering day-today solutions related to spatial planning and execution accuracy.

In GIFT City, spatial and other information related to urban planning, infrastructure planning, transport planning, architecture and engineering, has been integrated into a single system (Esri ArcGIS 10.2.1) that presents us specialised processes for the analysis of spatial problems and questions along with various analytical tools helping in developing spatial relationships in data, data modelling, data analysis and data storage. The GIS system gives a holistic view of the upcoming GIFT City as a smart city.

In GIFT City, the planners have used GIS in benchmarking of master plan, 3D visualisation for urban skyline, geometric network of power utility and landscape management. GIS is being used in real-time monitoring of developmental issues related to distortion and deviation while executing various utility services. Also, CCTV live feed to the GIS software helps in security surveillance by providing a secure workplace to the various stakeholders.

The potential of geo-informatics in the operation & maintenance of a smart city cannot be ignored. It can be used as a powerful tool to create and serve the multiple data-retrieving and analysing platforms. Comprehensive spatial data management will result in quick access to key information related to demand and supply.